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The Atlantic

The Books Briefing: How Horror Stories Empower Kids

Gruesome novels and chilling tales about ghoulish monsters and other dangers: Your weekly guide to the best in books
Source: James Keyser / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty

When he was just 4 years old, the author and illustrator Maurice Sendak caught a glance of a horrifying photo depicting the remains of Charles Lindbergh’s murdered son. A mutated version of the image reappeared decades later in Sendak’s chilling children’s book Outside Over There, in which goblins replace a baby with a changeling made of ice.

From gruesome fairy tales to macabre Victorian fantasy, . R. L. Stine’s blockbuster series raises hairs, a tale by the author N. D. Wilson about , petrifies the kids who read it.

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